CROW AGENCY — A new nonprofit newsroom on the Crow Reservation is celebrating the launch of its brick and mortar newsroom in the old mercantile building in Crow Agency.
Four Points Press is the digital reporting wing of Four Points Media, Inc., founded by Luella Brien, who also serves as editor-in-chief.
“I want people to go to our website first. I want people to come to this teeny, tiny office, and have a cup of coffee with us, and tell us what is going on. that’s all I can hope for,” Brien said.
Brien might be a familiar name: She has 20 years of experience as a journalist in Montana and considers the new media venture to be her legacy.
“We want to humanize what is happening here on the Crow Reservation and the surrounding area, and by having people from the community do the reporting and do the writing, that’s what we’re doing,” she said.
The Four Points Press website was an immediate hit when it went up last year.
“Within six months we were having big numbers, for having such a small community,” she said.
Four Points Media, Inc. is largely funded by grant money from the Reynolds Journalism Institute News Founder Grant, with additional support by the Tiny News Collective.
Brien plans to expand the operation over time to cover the area where the Crow people lived before the first Fort Laramie Treaty in the mid-19050s, as described by Crow leaders at the time as the ‘four points of a teepee;’ the Milk River in the north, near Red Lodge to the west, Wind River Canyon at its furthest southern point, and the foothills of the Black Hills in the east.
